Thread: Tax Foundation: 'Avoiding Tax Reform is No Longer an Option'

Tax Foundation: 'Avoiding Tax Reform is No Longer an Option'

By Cathy Burke
Monday, 27 Mar 2017 05:21 PM

Taxpayers spend 6.1 billion hours a year — at a cost of $234 billion in direct costs and lost productivity — to comply with the federal tax code, according to the president of the conservative National Taxpayers Union.

At an event Monday held by the tax research group Tax Foundation, NTU president Pete Sepp said avoiding tax reform is no longer an option, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

"The problem is the status quo — thinking that, well, if we don't do tax reform this year it will just be that bad," Sepp said, the Free Beacon reported. "No, the status quo is not the static quo — it's going to get worse."

"The paperwork burden inventory at the Office of Management and Budget related to Treasury is expected to rise by another 2 billion hours in the next few years," he added. "One-third added to that, we're looking at tax compliance costs of north of $400 billion a year."

The failure of the Republicans to push through health care reform makes tax reform harder, however, according to Sepp.

"This is the important point right now, it's an especially important one in this current post-Obamacare repeal environment," he said, the Free Beacon reported. "We now have about a trillion dollars of baseline problem now that we didn't think we would have before assuming Obamacare was going to be repealed."

"That's going to make tax reform a much tougher task. It also means we're going to have to find other ways of making every single simplification measure count, more so than it ever would have needed to count in the past."

Treasury Secretary Steven has said he's overseeing work on the Trump administration's bill over the past two months — and that it'd be introduced soon in one proposal covering both cuts in individual and corporate taxes.

http://www.newsmax.com/US/tax-founda.../27/id/781024/

We should pass the FairTax, HR 25 in the US House of Representatives and S 18 in the US Senate, FairTax Act of 2017, and do it immediately so it takes effect in 2019. This bill saves all those billions of hours of lost productivity and direct costs that cost US taxpayers $234 billion a year in tax compliance costs. That's before you measure the stress of income tax returns and the interference of the income tax with basic life in this country and the distortion it causes in personal and business decisions that adversely affect our economy, employment, wages and consumer choices.

The burden of the income tax system on our country and people has been enormous. It's stifled economic production-based growth, it's caused urban sprawl that's affected our wildlife habitats, it's complicated personal lives, it's resulted in millions and millions of foreclosures, it's ruined credit, it's impacted privacy, it's had nothing but a negative impact on our nation. It was unconstitutional under the original constitution which has to be amended to allow it. It's not paid the bills, instead it's generated $20 trillion of national debt. It's divided people into classes, and caused resentment between them.

The income tax is an authoritarian socialist scheme introduced and passed by a special session of a Democratic Congress in 1913 and signed into law by a Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson. 1913 was the Year of the Globalists, the year they took our beautiful free Republic and began its demise into a bankrupt banana republic. 1913 was also the Year of the Federal Reserve, which based on mandated income taxes collected under threat of fine, imprisonment and confiscation, provided the guaranteed income stream needed to support the Federal Reserve System.

The income tax is evil. It must be eliminated. The FairTax does this in a great way in my opinion, it's easy, people do nothing, retail businesses only collect it at the same of sale, the same as they do state sales tax, even on the same form, two lines, and they're paid for a statutory fee for the service they provide so whatever small expense they incur they are compensated for with the fee.

The Fairtax is a simple retail sales tax on new goods and services, used products are exempt, business to business transactions are exempt, charity actually given away for free is exempt, and education services are exempt because it's viewed as part of training for production and business.

It's time for Americans to start solving problems that are holding US back, pushing US down, and enriching the wrong people. Immigration, trade and income tax to name the three biggest problems.

Originally Posted by Judy

We should pass the FairTax, HR 25 in the US House of Representatives and S 18 in the US Senate, FairTax Act of 2017, and do it immediately so it takes effect in 2019. This bill saves all those billions of hours of lost productivity and direct costs that cost US taxpayers $234 billion a year in tax compliance costs. That's before you measure the stress of income tax returns and the interference of the income tax with basic life in this country and the distortion it causes in personal and business decisions that adversely affect our economy, employment, wages and consumer choices.

The burden of the income tax system on our country and people has been enormous. It's stifled economic production-based growth, it's caused urban sprawl that's affected our wildlife habitats, it's complicated personal lives, it's resulted in millions and millions of foreclosures, it's ruined credit, it's impacted privacy, it's had nothing but a negative impact on our nation. It was unconstitutional under the original constitution which has to be amended to allow it. It's not paid the bills, instead it's generated $20 trillion of national debt. It's divided people into classes, and caused resentment between them.

The income tax is an authoritarian socialist scheme introduced and passed by a special session of a Democratic Congress in 1913 and signed into law by a Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson. 1913 was the Year of the Globalists, the year they took our beautiful free Republic and began its demise into a bankrupt banana republic. 1913 was also the Year of the Federal Reserve, which based on mandated income taxes collected under threat of fine, imprisonment and confiscation, provided the guaranteed income stream needed to support the Federal Reserve System.

The income tax is evil. It must be eliminated. The FairTax does this in a great way in my opinion, it's easy, people do nothing, retail businesses only collect it at the same of sale, the same as they do state sales tax, even on the same form, two lines, and they're paid for a statutory fee for the service they provide so whatever small expense they incur they are compensated for with the fee.

The Fairtax is a simple retail sales tax on new goods and services, used products are exempt, business to business transactions are exempt, charity actually given away for free is exempt, and education services are exempt because it's viewed as part of training for production and business.

It's time for Americans to start solving problems that are holding US back, pushing US down, and enriching the wrong people. Immigration, trade and income tax to name the three biggest problems.

http://www.fairtaxfraud.com/fallout.asp

MW, not one argument in your link is true. Not one. For example, this excerpt about Social Security:

What Happened to My Social Security?

The plan calls for people to stop paying social security - both the employees and employers share. That's it...just stop paying it. Just take it out of the general fund. No plan for social security survival. No plan at all...just stop paying social security and Medicare and it will all magically sort itself out. Except that the plan cuts the estate tax, gift tax, and capital gains taxes to the tune of $700 billion a year so the treasury will suffer a major major major shortage of funds. Where will the money come from?

Take the money out of the general fund? Hold on there. That's not accurate. No matter what they say, taxes will go up or benefits will go down. You can't just take $700 billion out of the budget, give it to the wealthy, and expect this so-called "revenue neutral" plan to run everything like it is today on what is left over. Benefits will have to be cut. After all, we only have a limited budget and do have defense contractors to feed - why should we look out for "special interests" like the elderly?

Does that scare you? It should. This will hurt your parents, your grandparents, and eventually you. In order to make social security work we need more funds, not less. We need to make the rich pay social security tax on all income - not just up to the cut off point. We need to keep the social security money out of the control of the President and Congress.

The FairTax legislation does not pay for Social Security out of the "general fund" and is not in the control of the President or Congress under the FairTax. The FairTax legislation earmarks Social Security and Medicare payments directly to Social Security Administration. The FairTax rate of 23% is split by statute, 14.91% goes to General Revenue Fund to fund our government and 8.09% goes to Social Security Administration to fund Social Security and Medicare.

You are also quoting someone when you post that link who wants a No-Tax Plan in order to provide free college and free health care for all Americans.

The No-Tax Plan is a revolutionary replacement for the tax code that will cut taxes for everyone that works for their money and every business that has American workers. There is no tax whatsoever - you can spend all you earn on whatever you want and pay no taxes for your entire life! The plan would bring in enough money so that state and local taxes could also be eliminated. There would be enough money the first year to pay off the national debt! Healthcare and college could be free to all Americans.

Sounds like a Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton shrill to me!

Strange bedfellows, MW.

http://www.fairtaxfraud.com/fallout.asp

Originally Posted by MW

http://www.fairtaxfraud.com/fallout.asp

Yes, that is the Bernie and Hillary Shrills website who want everything for free at the expense of someone else.

The Fair Tax sounds good - sans prebate. A prebate or monthly check from the government is just a way to get people even more dependent on the government and that is not a good thing.

Also, that would demand a large bureaucracy to process the checks, and if one has to request the prebate - to process the request. That's what we need to eliminate.

Just put a fair tax on goods, deemed to be taxable. Food, medicene, and other things for example, could be excluded. States who have sales tax have no problem either putting taxes on or exempting some things. Texas seems to get a little picky like 'toothpaste without flouride is taxable - toothpaste with flouride is not'. Sometimes you wonder where these lawmakers get the time to actually discuss and come up with such things.

There could even be different percentages for some things.

Again, though, the government is not going to allow the people that much control over their own lives. To my mind, that's why the 'prebate' is built in - the carrot - the government dependency.

It isn't needed. With a fair sales tax, everyone would pay. Those who don't have much money to spend, would pay less taxes. Poor people already pay sales taxes in their own states.

Just me, but the prebate to me is a bit of 'pandering'.

The Fair Tax sounds good - sans prebate. A prebate or monthly check from the government is just a way to get people even more dependent on the government and that is not a good thing.

Also, that would demand a large bureaucracy to process the checks, and if one has to request the prebate - to process the request. That's what we need to eliminate.

There really wouldn't be any new bureaucracy created to process the Rebate/Prebate. The FairTax eliminates the payroll taxes which are now paid to and processed by Social Security every month. The FairTax earmarks 8.09% FairTax to Social Security every month. The FairTax requires Social Security to process the Rebate/Prebate per household. So all the employees currently processing payroll taxes for individual workers would now be processing the much simpler Rebate/Prebate per household. Also, the Rebate/Prebate will be processed for most people as direct deposit to accounts or Smart Cards, so there really won't be very many checks actually processed. It will be much easier too because the Rebate/Prebate is a fixed amount per year and doesn't fluctuate for most households very often whereas payroll taxes fluctuate every pay period. Employers still report your earnings to credit your SS Retirement Account for future benefits, but no money is processed because none is paid. Instead, Social Security will receive a huge single deposit every month from the 8.09% FairTax instead of 150 to 160 million payroll amounts to process. So it's actually about the same or possibly less paperwork for the government and a tremendous paperwork and financial processing reduction for employers and banks.

I would prefer a lower FairTax rate without the Rebate/Prebate but I also see why they designed this feature into the FairTax which is simple to duplicate the existing philosophy of taxation that essentials up to a certain amount should not be taxes, the same philosophy behind the personal and dependent deduction on income tax.

It''s actually quite a brilliant solution to two issues, funding Social Security and exempting essentials at the same time for citizens and legal residents. Illegal aliens of course are excluded from the Rebate/Prebate.

But I'm okay with reducing the rate and eliminating the Rebate/Prebate. Either way works for me.

Here's someone like you, Judy, that once believed in the Fair Tax scam:

http://fairtaxgoofy.blogspot.com/

Here's another person that initially thought the so-called Fair Tax plan was a winner, but after more research discovered it was a loser:

https://hereticaldruthers.wordpress....is-regressive/